Online advertising may be an important source of revenue for enterprises engaged in electronic commerce. Processes associated with technologies such as Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) and Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) enable a web page to be configured to display advertisements. Advertisements may commonly be found on many web sites. For example, advertisements may be displayed on search web sites and may be targeted to individuals based upon search terms provided by the individuals. Other web site publishers, such as news and sports web sites, may provide space for advertisements. The publishers of these web sites may sell advertising space to advertisers to defray the costs associated with operating the web sites as well as to obtain additional revenue.
As the Internet has grown, the number of web sites available for hosting advertisements has increased, as well as the diversity among web sites. In other words, the number of web sites focusing on selective groups of individuals has increased. As a result of this increase, it has become increasingly difficult for advertisers to optimize the targeting of their advertisements. Advertisers may be unfamiliar with the vast number of web sites available for hosting advertisements and may choose to host their respective advertisements on a less than optimal host web site. Likewise, advertisers may be unfamiliar with the most effective ways to target their advertisements. This may result in a lower rate of return for the advertiser. That advertiser may have received a greater rate of return had the advertiser targeted his advertisement more effectively.